


Into The Night

by Enness



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 09:00:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enness/pseuds/Enness
Summary: "Steve has the vague feeling one of them should be protesting about ‘not being a queer’, or pretending that this was some kind of surprise to either of them, but really he feels like this is where they were always bound to end up."A short fic about inevitability.





	Into The Night

"Do you think he’s still there?”

The car has, ‘til then, been deathly silent as they pull back up to the Byers house, and Steve’s almost relieved to see that Billy hasn’t woken up and torched the place. He doesn’t answer Max’s hesitant question, can’t give her the comfort she needs or help with the fear she’s holding tight under the slightest tremor in her voice. What he can do is take the lead and go back into the house alone while the kids quietly pile out of the Camaro and huddle outside – the first time in days he hasn’t had to physically restrain them from hurling themselves headlong into danger.

He clutches his bat tight, ready to deal with whatever level of rage Billy’s managed to work himself into. The tableau that greets him, though, is quieter, almost still. He takes it in in one quick glance – the crappy door from Joyce’s crappy fridge hanging loose from hinges that have buckled under the weight of a demodog corpse, which has sprawled free across the kitchen floor, flower-mouth artfully gaping in every direction – and sitting across from it, putting out what looks like his fifth or sixth chain-smoked cigarette in a pile on Joyce’s floor, is Billy.

He looks up at Steve and, for the first time, Steve sees some measure of vulnerability in him. Steve knows the exact look in his eyes – of someone who’s just had their entire world, their entire sense of being, ripped out from under them. He freaked out loudly when he felt it; Billy's freaking is quieter, entirely internal. Their eyes meet, and there’s a kind of wordless exchange where Steve tries to convey a sense of “Yeah, so, monsters huh?” mixed with “Seriously though if you come at me again I will end you with this bat”, and whatever he’s doing with his mangled face, it works. Billy slowly drags himself up from the floor, walks by Steve without a word, and gets into the front seat of his car. After a few moments of hushed conferral with the rest of the munchkins, Max separates from the group and slowly, carefully climbs into the passenger seat. He looks down at her for a moment and Steve’s grip tightens, but Billy starts the car and peels away without another word.

***

“Like a crappy, dead alarm clock with a fucking million teeth.”

Billy’s filling Steve in on how he woke up to a corpse thumping down next to him; the twinge of pity Steve feels is almost enough to outweigh the still-healing bruises on his face. It’s two weeks later and the first time they’ve so much as made eye contact. They’re at a party – Billy because he’s a fixture among the popular kids by now, Steve because he’s wandered along almost out of habit. A few beers in, Billy catches Steve’s eye and without needing to say anything they peel off from the group, finding a quiet spot down at the back of the yard to talk.

Steve had almost hoped that Billy would just forget the entire night ever happened, but there’s a twitchy, barely-suppressed energy about him that shows he’s been stewing on this, and Steve figures if he’s going to be a liability, he may as well be a liability with some understanding of the depth of shit they’ll all be in if whatever creepy-ass government agency’s been running Hawkins Lab figures out that the secret’s spreading further. Billy listens, mostly-quiet, punctuating Steve’s story with the occasional disbelieving curse, but there’s no heart in it – he’s seen what lives in the upside down, and he gets to deal with that now. His face flickers when he hears how much Max has been involved – a speedy re-evaluation of his not-sister hidden under an instinctive sneer.

After a while, when he’s had a chance to process just a little bit, they break apart, drifting back into the party like nothing’s changed. Steve ghosts shortly after; on his way out he sees Billy, surrounded by drunk, laughing teenagers, staring at nothing with a blank look on his face.

***

“Heads up, pretty boy!”

Steve wouldn’t have guessed that having Billy be friendly would actually be more distracting than having him be a complete tool, but the basketball that just dinged him on the head because he was too focused on watching him suggests otherwise. Steve shakes himself, nodding a half-hearted acknowledgement to his coach's screams to get his head in the game. Billy’s still laughing at him as he runs back into position, but it’s a kinder laugh than normal, with a smile that actually reaches his eyes.

It’s not that Steve’s staring, as such, but there’s something magnetic about Billy’s intensity – about the way he holds himself, the way he moves, the way he expects every eye in the room to be on him and thrives on every bit of it. Anyone would watch. Anyone would get distracted. And when it isn’t filtered through a lens of mutual disdain, it’s like Steve’s seeing him properly for the very first time.

***

“Do you miss it?”

Nancy’s following his eyes across the cafeteria to a table where the ‘popular’ kids are braying about something that’s almost definitely idiotic. Billy’s in the middle of them, laughing along with the rest, and Steve gets it. He tried doubling down on 'normal', tried to drag Nancy with him through the expected steps of generic American teendom – if you just keep going, wear the right clothes, turn up at the right parties, laugh at the right times, you can forget for a while that literal monsters are real, that there are other worlds out there trying to claw their way into ours and kill us all, and that all of the petty high school crap that seemed so important is just…well, bullshit.

But he can’t pretend this time – can’t forget the tunnels, the rushing steps and howls. Nothing is normal – or rather, everything’s normal, and he’s one of the few people who knows just how fucked-up and terrifying ‘normal’ is. It’s why he’s still sitting here with Nancy and Jonathan, even though a jealous little part of his brain is screaming. They understand; even if they don’t all talk about it much, they know what it means to live on a constant knife-edge. So yeah, he misses the simplicity, but that’s gone now, and sitting at the in-crowd’s table for lunch isn’t going to change that.

***

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re trying way too hard to be an asshole?”

There’s no real venom in Steve’s words. It’s two months since the tunnels, and he and Billy are perched on the hood of the Camaro, beers in hand, watching the sun set over the quarry. The first time Billy called around unannounced and practically ordered him to get into the car, Steve wondered (just a little bit) if Billy might be planning on murdering him. He got in anyway, and they’ve fallen into a semi-regular pattern of hanging out together, even if they spend most of their time sniping at each other and drinking.

Steve wonders if Billy sees him as an escape valve, the same way he sees Nancy and Jonathan. Just someone to be around who can understand why you might have a different set of priorities than ‘Who’s taking who to prom?’. He wonders why he cares how Billy sees him.

Billy’s eyes flash when Steve mocks him, and there’s that same intensity, the volcano barely contained under the surface. It’s like poking a tiger, or trying to jump through fire – half the thrill is in how badly wrong it might go. Steve wouldn’t ever have called himself a thrillseeker – he would have said that trouble just kept finding him. But he’s the one who got in the car, and he’s the one who keeps on poking.

***

“Tell anyone and you’re a dead man.”

When Billy finally kisses him, growling a brief warning that neither of them really believes, he isn’t sure if he’s more surprised that it's happening or that it took so long. Billy’s kisses burn just the way he’d known they would, and they stumble their way to the backseat of his car, barely breaking apart for air. There’s a dizzying unfamiliarity to something Steve’s done with girls more times than he can count, and even though he’s spent weeks staring at Billy, mapping every inch of his face and body while barely realising he was doing it, there’s so much that surprises him – how soft Billy’s hair is, how rough his stubble feels, how weird-yet-amazing-yet-weird his dick feels sliding against Steve’s. For a few minutes, the bullshit goes away.

Neither of them says much in the aftermath. Steve has the vague feeling one of them should be protesting about ‘not being a queer’, or pretending that this was some kind of surprise to either of them, but really he feels like this is where they were always bound to end up. He’d never really thought about guys in that way until Billy rolled into town, and yet now he can’t remember a time when he didn’t feel drawn to him. They lie in silence until Billy’s weight starts to get uncomfortable and their sweat starts to cool in the encroaching night. When Billy drops him home, he stays on his front porch and watches the car crawl around the corner, the slowest he’s ever seen it go.

***

“What the hell are we even doing?”

It takes another four trips to the quarry before Steve manages to put any kind of words on the question. In some ways, it’s ridiculous. They can’t be boyfriends – for one thing, they’re barely even friends half the time, Billy’s macho bullshit rubbing every part of Steve the wrong way, Steve’s laid-back go-with-the-flow chill driving Billy up the walls. Besides, what are they going to do – hold hands on the way to class, pass love notes, be each other’s prom dates? Best case scenario, they’d be run out of town.

But there’s comfort in even asking, in talking, in just acknowledging that there’s a “we” and a thing that “we’re doing”, and while they don’t exactly find the words for it, they know that whatever non-relationship they’re not in, they’re not in it together.

***

“That’s not from basketball, is it?”

It’s a statement rather than a question. It’s the first time Steve’s parents have been out of town since they started…whatever this is, and the first time that he’s seen Billy naked under any kind of actual light. Steve’s never been accused of being quick on the uptake, but he’s smart enough to put together the fact that Billy mentioned he was going to miss curfew when he dropped Steve home on Tuesday, that he’s been wearing a shirt at practice since Wednesday, the throwaway comments about his dad that suddenly don’t seem so throwaway.

The fight is inevitable – Steve wants to tell someone, preferably Hopper, preferably immediately, and Billy wants Steve to shut the fuck up and mind his own business, and there’s really no workable middle ground to find. Billy puts his shirt back on and is getting ready to leave when Steve quietly takes his hand and whispers an apology. The rage and shame and burning anger seep out of Billy, and he lies back down. Their first night together in a real bed and they spend it fully clothed, spooning and talking – not that long ago, Steve would have seen it as a complete waste.

***

“Whose turn is it this time?”

Billy asks the question with a smirk near the end of their latest argument, because really, they’re off as often as they’re on. One of them inevitably blows up at the other and either ends things or does something stupid to achieve the same result. One week Steve’ll make another comment about going to the police and Billy will tell him to fuck all the way off back to the nice side of town and stay there; the next Billy will get freaked out about someone at school commenting on their weird friendship and break things off. Once, Steve gets drunk at a party, decides he’s sick of Billy constantly being an asshole, and has awkward sex with Laurie Prendergast in Amy Farmer’s guest room; when they get back together after that blowout, at least they have some established rules about how monogamous they both want to be. Once, Billy says something truly awful about Lucas, and Steve stays away for nearly two weeks before Billy begs and grovels and swears that he’ll be better.

Steve hates himself a little bit that time.

It becomes almost a joke between them – whoever’s fucked up most recently buys the other beer, apologises, and they move on. On some level, Steve knows it’s unhealthy – to be so lost in someone, so incapable of not going back to them, even as you lash out and hurt each other. No one’s ever gotten under his skin like Billy has – no one has ever seen through him as clearly, and that means that no one’s ever been capable of hurting him like Billy is with just a few cruel words and a sneer. But the fire makes him feel alive in a way that no one else ever has, and he’d rather burn up with Billy than drift on alone.

Besides, he reasons, every couple has their ‘thing’. They could do a lot worse than ‘a constant cycle of break-ups and mind-blowing make-up sex’.

***

“I really don’t want to judge, but…*him*?”

He tells Nancy, because of course he does. An ugly little part of him hopes that it hurts a little – she moved on about a minute and a half after they broke up, so why shouldn’t she get to hear that he has too? But mostly it’s because he feels like his head will explode if he goes one more minute without talking to *someone* about this, and he knows for a fact that she can keep a secret.

He’s more nervous telling her than he was when he first asked her to be his girlfriend – ultimately it all comes out in a jumble of words, and he can see it taking her a few seconds to parse through what he’s said and understand. The slow, shocked realisation spreading over her face makes him want to bolt, but she looks genuine when she says that she doesn’t care that he’s with another guy. She cares quite a bit that it’s Billy Hargrove, and it doesn’t help that their conversation is punctuated by seeing Billy and Tommy shove some unfortunate freshman into a locker and stroll away laughing, but when she takes Steve’s hand and smiles at him, it’s warm and genuine, and probably the most affection he’s felt from her since long before they broke up.

***

“Stop trying to save me!”

Billy yells this in the middle of their latest fight, and it gives Steve pause. Billy, who barely even likes himself, never seems to fully believe that Steve could feel that way, and tends to lapse into assuming that it’s some weird white knight thing where Steve wants to try and ‘rescue’ him from himself. Steve occasionally realises that he devotes way too much of his time and energy to trying to make Billy be nice to people, or treat him well, or look after himself when he’s drinking, or protect himself from his dad, or just maintain a civil conversation with anyone for more than 30 seconds. Managing Billy's emotions is an exhausting job, but actually *having* Billy's emotions seems far worse, and he cares enough to want to help, no matter how futile it can feel.

It’s not that he’s trying to ‘fix’ Billy. He knows their story doesn’t end with the two of them getting nice jobs and settling down in Hawkins with a few kids and a big dog. But knowing something and believing it are two different things, and he can’t deny that there’s a part of him that wishes Billy weren’t so angry with everyone all of the time, and that wishes his presence was enough to help all on its own. He'd die before admitting that to himself, though, let alone to Billy, so he denies whatever on-the-nose accusation is thrown at him, shuts down, and tells Billy to go fuck himself.

***

“I really hate this town.”

There’s nothing Billy loves more than getting out of Hawkins. He drives away from the town just to see how far he can get before it’s time to turn around and head back. It’s a minor act of rebellion, pushing out the edges of the small town bubble as much as possible, waiting until graduation when it’ll finally burst and he can get away for good. His car is his one taste of real freedom, and he’s more at home there than he is in his own house.

They’ve talked a little about what happens next. In just a few months they’ll be out of high school forever. Neither of them is exactly college material; Steve’s parents had vague hopes when he was dating ‘that nice Wheeler girl’, but are realistic enough to know that it’s not going to happen now.

Billy wants to head back west. He misses the sun, the ocean. He misses the freeing anonymity of California. Steve casually mentions that he’s never been to California. Billy says he’ll show it to him. It’s not a plan, but it’s something, and that’s enough for Steve to work from, no matter how unrealistic. Just because you know you’re dreaming, it doesn’t mean you want to wake up.

***

“Where do you go?”

Steve asks this on one of their last nights at the quarry. He has a tendency to get lost in Billy’s eyes, and so often, they’re staring at nothing, like Billy’s mind has just gotten up and wandered out of his body. Like he's gone somewhere better, even if it's just for a moment. Sometimes it takes him a while to react when Steve says his name. Sometimes he looks so sad to be back that Steve hates himself for doing it.

This time, he snaps back immediately. He smiles, laying on the charm thick. Steve’s learned not to look at anything but the eyes – his face is like rubber, bending however he wants it to, covering his feelings in a heartbeat with the practiced ease of someone who’s learnt it as a survival technique, but his eyes are his vulnerability. They’re where Steve can see his fire, his rage, his despair, and occasionally, like now, a pure sparkling happiness.

The weather is strangely warm for spring, tight, like there’s a storm building, and the sunset turns the sky a brilliant, monstrous red.

***

“Fucking faggots.”

Just a few weeks out from graduation, it breaks. Steve knows there’s been whispers building about the two of them – people have noticed how much time they spend together, the glances, the smiles, the fact that the hottest guy in school hasn’t so much as gone on a date with any girl in months.

It comes at the worst possible time. They’re in an off-again phase; Steve can barely remember what started the argument, but it ended with him throwing Billy out of his house three days ago, and they haven’t spoken since, until Billy showed up today with the tight movements and slight limp that signifies a new batch of bruises under his clothes, and a new buildup of rage just waiting to be set off. So he goes to talk to Billy at lunch, to apologise, to help, and unconsciously his hand reaches out to touch Billy’s arm, and that’s when Eric Sanders, some moron jock with an ugly sneer on his face, spits out the exact wrong words.

Billy’s up and moving so fast and hard that he knocks Steve off his feet. By the time he’s scrambled back up, Billy has the other kid on the ground and is punching his face again and again and again. Steve dives, drags him off, holds him back until he stops struggling. The cafeteria around them is screams and sobbing and someone yelling for an ambulance. Eric doesn’t get up.

***

“What the hell does that mean, ‘tried as an adult’?”

It means, in short, that Billy is a month shy of 18 years old with a mile-long juvenile record for a million and one petty offenses across two states, who couldn’t fit more perfectly into the role of ‘street thug’, while Eric is a comatose former-star-athlete who made good grades and looked surprisingly photogenic in his letterman jacket.

Billy’s dad swung for bail and is paying Eric’s hospital bills, as much to save face as anything else, and the only saving grace is that he’s not stupid enough to punish Billy himself when Billy’s being seen by cops and attorneys every few days.

Billy’s seemed smaller since it happened. Where there was fire, there just a void now, and he keeps shrinking further and further into himself.

***

“You’re taking it?”

The public defender has worked out a plea deal. 5 years, medium security. He’ll be out by the time he’s 23, maybe even earlier with good behaviour. There’s a hundred witnesses to what Billy did, most of whom will readily attest to Billy’s generally violent and disagreeable nature, and the odds of getting a jury who’d find what Eric said to be a mitigating factor rather than a simple and accurate statement of fact is beyond slim. Steve knows this, and yet there’s still a quaver in his voice, a vague hope that they can figure out some other option.

Billy doesn’t want another option. He quietly tells Steve that he deserves more than 5 years. They spend one last night up at the quarry, one last sunset, one last night-time drive back into town, and all the while Steve feels the same sense of inevitability he felt that first night. This is where things were always bound to end up. He was never going to be enough to save Billy.

***

“I’ll miss you.”

Max seems to honestly mean it; their shared knowledge of the upside down has bonded them too. She’s the only one of Billy’s family to come to the sentencing, the only one to insist that Steve drives her to the prison with Billy on his surrender date. She hugs him goodbye, and watches Steve do the same, and knows in that moment that all of the rumours about why this all happened were true.

Steve wants to say the same thing. He wants to say so much more, but there aren’t words, and there isn’t time, and Billy’s turned and walked through the gate before he can do more than whisper at him to stay safe.

He drives Max home, and she wraps him in a tight hug before running back into her house. He manages to make it half a mile down the road before he has to pull in and sob.

***

“I don’t think you should visit any more.”

Billy can’t even look him in the face as he says it. It’s been four months, and each week has been more excruciating than the last. They can’t touch, or talk openly, without putting Billy at risk. Billy’s hair has been shaved short, and he’s lost his swagger – more than that, he barely seems like himself any more. Steve tries to argue, quietly tries to insist without getting visibly emotional, but Billy softly tells him that they both need to move on, that the only way he’s ever going to survive this is if he doesn’t have to worry about putting on a brave face for someone else every week, that he needs to know that Steve’s moving on, that the guilt of wrecking yet another life is more than he can handle. He finally meets Steve’s eye, and there’s a hint of the old Billy as he gives him a sad smile; they say one last wordless goodbye before the guard comes to pull Billy away.

Steve has been doing a make-work job in his father’s office to save up some cash, spinning his wheels in Hawkins to stay close by while the rest of the world moves on. His parents are studiously, deliberately unaware of his exact role in the latest town scandal, just knowing that a friend of his has been in some trouble and he needs to hang around. Or needed to, until now. The part of him that isn’t numb from months of devastation is horribly, shamefully relieved to be let off the hook.

***

“You sure you know your way around the neighbourhood?”

Nancy’s letting him stay on her and Jonathan’s couch while he gets set up in New York. She’s studying journalism in NYU while Jonathan scrapes out a living as a photography-assistant-cum-general-dogsbody for a crappy supermarket tabloid. He briefly considered California, but it felt like piggybacking on someone else’s dream. He sees now what Billy meant – he can walk down the street here without seeing anyone he knows. Everyone in this city seems to live like the gates of hell are moments away from opening and spilling out over them. 

It feels like home.

***

“God, who hurt you?”

She means it as a joke. He thinks her name might be Loretta, or Lorraine – he missed it when they were introduced and it’s too late to ask now. She’s noticing what Nancy has delicately commented on a dozen times – he’s changed. He’s more guarded, more cautious. He hasn’t been on a date since he moved to the city, and that was 8 months ago. He’s got a job in a coffee house, and has made a bunch of new friends, and generally started building a life for himself, but there’s a wall up around him that wasn’t there before. Nancy isn’t trying to hurt him, just trying to let him know that he can let it down every once in a while, but he honestly isn’t sure if he can any more.

He politely excuses himself from Lor-whatever, heads up to the roof of the apartment block, and lights a cigarette as he looks out over the city lights.

***

“I just…I thought you’d want to know.”

Max’s voice sounds deeper. He isn’t sure if it’s because it’s been nearly three years since they spoke, or because she’s husky from crying. He doesn’t ask for details – doesn’t want to know exactly what happened. He can think of half a dozen possibilities off the top of his head – mouthed off at the wrong time, looked at someone the wrong way, lashed out, lost his temper, lost his view of the world outside, lost hope. It doesn’t really matter, and he doesn’t want the image of how it ended burned into his mind. All that matters is that he’s gone.

The funeral is small; he’s one of the few people there who isn’t family, though he still gives them as wide a berth as possible. He and Max share a nod across the grave, but there’s not much that either of them can say. He waits for a long time after the rest of the mourners have left, staring at the headstone, trying to make sense of it.

***

“I’m sorry.”

A year to the day later and he’s back again. He doesn’t even really know what he’s apologising for. For leaving? For staying too long? For not getting on with his life like he was supposed to? For not planting his feet? For never saying "I love you", even when he realised that, far too late?

There’s nothing he hasn’t apologised for in his head a million times already, and it doesn’t feel any better to say them to a grave, but he’s hoping that maybe this will help. Maybe he’ll stop seeing him around every corner. Maybe he can properly move on. Maybe he'll finally want to. Right now, he clings tight; why would he let go when holding on is the only thing that makes him feel alive?

He’s had the dream more times than he can count. The car idling in front of him. The dark road ahead lit only by headlights. The sky alive with stars. And a pair a brilliant blue eyes looking up at him, matched by a teasing smile.

***

“Get in. We’re going for a ride.”

**Author's Note:**

> Slightly belated A/N...but if you're the kinda person who's interested in this stuff (and I know I am), fic is named for (and written largely to) this: https://open.spotify.com/track/6ctLYR4qUQ6kaXFfbYDlwZ
> 
> Also, thanks for the lovely comments! And sorry for going full-Picoult - I love this ship, but trying to picture a relationship between these two trashbags (especially Steve, but _especially_ Billy) just doesn't fill me with optimism...


End file.
